A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Sense of Community from Individualist-Collectivist Perspectives

To use community psychology, which arose in American culture, as a reference model for understanding and solving Korean social problems, the author saw how to bridge the differences between the two cultures as an important issue not to be overlooked.

Since sense of community is a person's attitude toward their in-groups, the author judged individualism–collectivism — a framework comparing person–group relations across cultures — to be the right lens.

A survey study giving the same questionnaire in Korea and the U.S., testing three hypotheses (e.g., that Koreans would show a higher sense of community).

Volunteer married men aged 30–49 with at least some college, a job, and an urban residence: 198 Koreans and 184 (white) Americans.
For each of nine groups — immediate family, close relatives, distant relatives, neighbors, coworkers, friends, alumni association, religious group, hobby group — respondents rated 12 items on the four elements of sense of community (membership, influence, fulfillment of needs, emotional connection) on a 5-point scale; they also completed a neighborhood questionnaire and listed the groups they belonged to.

The first hypothesis — that Koreans would show a higher sense of community — was not supported, since overall amounts did not differ.

Of the four elements, only "membership" was significantly higher for Koreans.

The ranking of the nine groups (immediate family, friends, coworkers, close relatives, and so on) was exactly the same in both countries, except that alumni associations and religious groups swapped places.

A discriminant analysis — classifying strong attachment to alumni groups and relatives as Korean, and to religious groups and immediate family as American — correctly sorted 80% of respondents.

Counting only voluntary groups, Americans belonged to far more than Koreans; Koreans belonged to many involuntary groups such as family gatherings, alumni associations, and hometown associations.

In both countries, renters and people planning a shorter stay in their current home had a weaker sense of community toward their neighborhood.

About four in five Korean respondents appeared to want to move within five years — to buy their own home or a bigger one.

The author attributes Koreans' weak neighborhood bonds partly to a culture that treats housing too much as an asset, pushing people to keep moving up to better homes.

The lack of an overall difference may be because Koreans' strong preference for involuntary groups and Americans' strong sense of community toward voluntary groups cancelled each other out.

One reason Americans showed a stronger bond with immediate family despite Korea's familism: with long working hours, Korean managerial and office workers spend little actual time with family yet, paradoxically, regard the home as very important.

American community psychology grew in a culture where voluntary participation is common, so applying it directly to Korean culture, with its strong preference for involuntary groups, is expected to be difficult.

Existing sense-of-community questionnaires were built for geographic communities, so the new questionnaire (SCQ) made to cover nine different groups had limitations.

Women, rural residents, and people with a high-school education or less were not surveyed; follow-up studies are needed.

Sense of community (공동체의식) Members' feeling of belonging, the feeling that they matter to one another and to the group, and a shared belief that their needs will be met through being involved together (McMillan's definition).

Relational community (관계적 공동체) Unlike a geographic community based on place (a neighborhood, a city), a community formed by relationships or shared interests regardless of location — such as religious or academic groups.

Etic and emic Etic is an outside observer's view of a culture through the observer's own concepts and assumptions; emic is the view of the culture's insiders.